I bought some roving about a year ago and noticed one of the three colors now has small lumps in it. There doesn't appear to be anything inside the lumps (about one-half pea size), just more dense roving. What causes this? What can I do to get rid of it? If I use this color in thrummed mittens, the lumps are noticeable.

thanks,

I have no idea what may be the cause, but would it be practical to remove them? Or are there so many that it would take forever and considerably reduce the roving volume?
I wonder if it's possible that the roving was put under some kind of stress when created and now the fibers relaxed? That's the only thing I can think of if there are no critters in your wool.

I don't want to scare you, but my suspection is MOTHS.
I had some roving that i used to fill my dolls with. The dolls sat protected in an moth-free environment and suddenly had holes in them. I had an expert look at them and he told me their must have been moth-eggs in the wool. Because the dolls sat in a warm place, the eggs had developed.

So please be carefull and give the roving an anti-moth treatment before you use it !

Interesting--I have roving with stuff in it as well but to be it looks just like that stuff as it is the color of the rovings and it is in plastic all ready. At least I hope that is what it is---

If you have thick dense little blobs in your roving that don't contain cocoons or bits of hay/grass, there is a simple cause. The machinery used to card the wool needed to be cleaned, and the brushes were already clogged with stuff that had been brushed out of other people's wool. It was redeposited into yours. If you haven't used too much of the stuff, you should contact the manufacturer and get a different batch. Or a big rebate.

If you were spinning the stuff, (which is the usual use of roving) you would be pulling your hair out!

Sounds like neps to me. When you card roving, second cuts and torn bits of fiber turn into little "pills." (There's also noils, which are fibers that have tangled in the carding process; they form similar bits.) Neps could possibly also have formed if the roving has been pushed around a lot while it's been sitting around.

If they're throughout (from carding rather than handling the stuff while it's been in the house), you can't get rid of them except by picking them out as you go, which, though aggravating, can work in spinning--but not in knitting: unless you're drafting (spinning procedure), picking out neps can just create more neps.

I'm not sure, but I think moth eggs are a lot smaller than that.

Moth eggs are microscopic. the lumps are most likely neps or noils. they are a PITA when you want to spin smooth even yarn. they can be partly drafted out and then picked, at the same time the work load of picking neps as you spin really slows you down. It makes for more problems than vegetable matter so you might want to let the mill or dyer or whoever provided your neppy roving about the problem. I bought some LLama with a healthy serving of twiggy bits. Most of it dropped out as I spun and I spent a lot of my time knitting it picking out the rest, which slowed me down a lot. It is nearly finished and I will be much fussier about picking out all the bits as I spin next time.